1. Field
The disclosed embodiments relate to reputation systems. More specifically, the disclosed embodiments relate to techniques for estimating reputation scores in reputation systems.
2. Related Art
Online reputation systems may be used to establish ratings or reputation scores for a variety of items, including search results, users, organizations, products, and/or services. The ratings or reputation scores may facilitate decision-making related to the items, particularly in light of the growing amount and availability of information in the digital age. For example, hotel ratings may allow a consumer to filter the set of hotels to be considered during an online hotel booking. Similarly, scores or rankings of users by the users' levels of expertise in professional skills may be used by recruiters to identify ideal candidates for job opportunities and/or open positions during use of an online professional network.
To generate reputation scores or ratings, reputation systems may rely on feedback or data related to the items being scored. For example, a reputation system may collect ratings, preferences, activities, sensor readings, and/or other data from multiple sources such as users, sensors, financial institutions, and/or organizations. The reputation system may also apply a machine-learning technique to the collected data to identify patterns in the data, which are used to predict and/or infer unknown attributes associated with the items, such as a user's rating of a product or service he/she has not yet tried. Finally, the reputation system may use the predicted and/or inferred attributes to make recommendations and/or rank the items, thereby filtering the amount of information and/or choices associated with the items so that decisions related to the items may be more easily made.
Consequently, decision-making and information processing related to large sets of items may be facilitated by mechanisms for increasing the accuracy, coverage, and/or flexibility of reputation systems for scoring or ranking the items.
In the figures, like reference numerals refer to the same figure elements.